BBC showed documentary on Alma Deutscher last night. It is well worh watching for anyone with access to BBC programmes.
For anyonewho has not heard of Alma she is an 12. year old girl who has just had an opera she has written performed in Vienna.
She started to read music at the age of 2 before she could, before she could read the written word. She has been home taught, plays piano and violin and has been compared to Mozart.
I would be interested to hear what others think about her incredible talent.
Last nights documentary raised so many questions for me.
Are you born with talent and how much can this talent be developed?
There appears to be so many similarities to the young Mozart.

I've no TV and so no licence so I didn't watch it but have been following Alma, or rather catching up with what she's already done, since last year.
One thing it she certainly shows for me is that if you simply leave young people with no distractions, some of them can become astonishing. Hard to imagine Alma would be anything like that if brought up in a home with mobile phone in her hand all the time, a computer in her room and a TV on all the time.
Yes there are parallels with the young Mozart, though Alma is not quite in that place I don't think. The development of it will be a matter for whoever takes on a mentoring and professional guidance role, if anybody does. Her music at the moment is almost entirely derivative, and is unbelievably clever, for any age let alone 12. Whether she will develop her own voice and learn to embrace a more challenging artistic vision remains to be seen; at the moment she is, with her frightfully eloquent delivery entrenched in everything needing to be 'beautiful' - in the terms of the perspective of a small girl who, very rightly, has limited experience and awareness of the world. She is amazingly intelligent and I am sure that in time will absorb and be able to use a wider palette of expression as she matures.

You make some interesting points Stephen. One thing that came accross in the Documentary was that Alma's family did not possess a television but encouraged their childrens imagination.
I hope that she is left to discover her own voice, although i fear that she will become exploited by people trying to manipulate her undoubted talent.
At the age of 12 she already has a slick website publicising her skills.